


Delicate

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, David Lieberman Needs a Hug, M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-17 10:59:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16515068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: Sometimes, things end. David understands that. He just wishes he were better at dealing with it.





	1. End

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by an Anon on Tumblr for my NaNoWriMo stories. Anon said: Sarah and David seperate and David kind of collapses. It's amicable and Sarah still cares about him, but things are too complicated to just go back to normal and David agrees that they need time to figure things out. Left alone though, he's a self-destructive mess. Frank takes it upon himself to keep him together.
> 
> This is my take on that. I know it says 2 chapters, but we'll see how many we get out of this.

Sarah tells him not to think of it as the end of anything, but when she packs Leo and Zach into her car (the very one Frank had replaced the headlight on, the one he had intentionally let her hit him with) with their closets cleared out and the trunk full of things she wanted with them right away, an ending is all David sees.

The kids hug him and Leo texts him a list of the books she’s planned on reading over the summer. It’s just a break, Sarah reminds him gently, and kisses his cheek before closing the car door and backing out of the driveway. It’s just a break, so why does Sarah pack her photo albums? Why does the sight of their tail lights fill him with the same despair he’d felt when Carson Wolf had backed him into a very public corner, guns drawn on him?

This time, he’s alone surrounded by the familiar, and the ache in his chest is wholly emotional. At this point, he would almost welcome a bullet.

The house is huge and yawns around him, and he doesn’t leave it for two weeks. Sarah took the photos in the albums, but he has the ones in frames, and spends one drunk evening gathering every single one and piling them onto Sarah’s side of the bed, waking up with one of their wedding photos pressed to his chest. He doesn’t cry. At all. That’s actually the worst part of those two weeks -- being so alone and not even being able to cry about it.

Placing the photos back where they all belong takes the better part of an afternoon, and he does it hung over and hating himself. Maybe Sarah was right to want away from him.

The entire time he’d been living as a dead man, his tacit agreement with himself was no drinking before five and no getting drunk before seven. The photos are back where they belong well after seven, and he feels he’s earned himself a drink. He’s an emotional drunk, right? Maybe if he drinks enough, he can cry and get that part of this over with.

He puts his fist through the liquor cabinet door instead and wakes up on an air mattress in his own basement, hand wrapped in a bloody ace bandage, cuddling a bottle of bourbon. There’s not much left in the bottle and David thinks, looking at it, that a little hair of the dog will keep him from feeling like total shit.

About this, he is completely wrong. The bottle, half empty upon waking, is fully empty an hour later, and he can only stare dully at the stairs out of the basement, wondering if the search for more alcohol is worth the trouble of climbing a full dozen steps. Just sitting up has him feeling queasy, and the room actually spins when he rocks onto his feet. He ends up seated on the third stair up, before remembering Sarah’s wine cabinet. They’d moved it right to the basement when Leo was still toddling after the first time she’d innocently grabbed one of the bottles and pulled it from its little nook, dropping it on the floor. It hadn’t broken, thank god for that, but just to be safe, they’d taken the whole thing down stairs and put it --

Bingo, in the corner by the Halloween crap. David finds it without trouble and, lucky him, there’s five long-forgotten bottles waiting for him. He picks one out, a heart-healthy red, and returns to his air mattress to figure out how to get the cork out. Thank god he’s got a pocket knife and doesn’t mind the idea of drinking a little cork with his wine.

He gets drunk, and he thinks about how right Sarah was, and he hates himself all over again.

It doesn’t even occur to him to be angry with Frank. Helping Frank had been the right thing to do, Sarah had even said as much. It was the damning bullet hole in his car’s rear bumper that made this whole thing an issue. Frank had needed help and he’d turned to David because who else could he trust? David hadn’t even hesitated.

Point of fact, in the months between getting back to his family and Frank returning to them, he’d been bored. When Frank showed up with a problem, looking for help, David had been _eager_ to join him. David had told Sarah -- of course he had -- but he left out the part where he had to go out on the streets with Frank, running interference from his car while Frank got into the bastard’s headquarters and took out the guy he’d been tracking down. Nobody had expected anyone to figure out that David’s car was the source of the jamming signal that had kept anyone from warning the people in the facility Frank had infiltrated. Certainly they hadn’t expected anyone to try shooting at him.

Getting away uninjured hadn’t been enough for Sarah, and David understood. He really did. She said they, meaning any bad guy, really, could have used the bullet hole in his fender to find him eventually, and she was right about that, too. They could have tracked him down, killed him later. They could have followed him home. They could have hurt the kids.

It had been the right thing to do. She didn’t argue that. The targets Frank had been after were human traffickers, _slavers_ , and half of them had ties to honest-to-god Nazi organizations. They were bad people and killing them had saved a lot of lives, right then and there, allowing Frank to release several captives from shipping containers stored on the property.

But the risk to their family -- well, _he_ didn’t argue that. He hadn’t thought of what could have gone wrong. He’d just wanted to help Frank again. When he’d taken off after the first shot at the car, he’d been _exhilarated_ , riding a fucking adrenaline high like none other he’d ever experienced.

He’d had _fun_ , goddamn him.

Two weeks drag by; they also seem to fly. He’s tired all the time. He takes care of his wounded hand in a rudimentary sort of way, fully aware (in the odd moments of sobriety that are the only times he bothers to pay attention to it) that it’s the kind of thing he should see a doctor about. He showers twice. Sometimes he remembers to feed himself; he makes himself couscous that turns to mush because he leaves it on too long, he makes himself sandwiches that go stale before he remembers to take his first bite.

He wakes up on a Friday with the bleariness he’s coming to just accept as part of the conditions of consciousness. Upstairs, the alarm beeps as the front door opens, and he groans quietly, for a moment thinking it must be Sarah and he’s a mess and she’ll be so mad at him for --

But it wouldn’t be Sarah. Sarah’s in Maine with the kids, at her parent’s place. She’d at least have called first.

David is muddling his way up the stairs when the door at the top of them is ripped open, and he has enough time to think, hopefully this will be quick, bracing himself for pain, resigning himself to it, before Frank appears, back lit and glaring down at him in a sort of disapproving fury. David sighs and turns around, heading back to his air mattress and whatever comfort can be found in the last half-bottle of wine he’s got.

Frank follows him. He doesn’t give a shit.

Or, he doesn’t give a shit until one of those heavy hands lands on his shoulder and drags him backwards. Then he’s suddenly in full fight mode.

He turns sharply to get the hand off him, and aims his fist for Frank’s chest rather than his face. Frank’s used to getting hit in the face, and David knows all the tender spots on Frank’s torso, places where he’s broken ribs or has recently been knifed or bruised.

What he forgot, because he was hungover and because he was a _fucking idiot_ , was that the hand he’d managed to curl into a fist was the one wrapped in an ace bandage, blood stained and stiff now. He bit back the urge to scream when Frank caught his fist in one hand and squeezed gently. Of course Frank would stop his blow before it could land, and now the pain would come, a sharp rap of knuckles to his own face, hard enough to drop him. Frank had done it before -- Frank had done it twice.

Except that didn’t happen. Frank just held his captured hand until David whimpered and pulled against his grip, and he looked down at David in a sort of assessing, tired way.

“Get upstairs,” he said, and stepped to the side so David could pass. When David didn’t move, Frank made a low noise and reached for him. “I’m not playin’ with you, Lieberman. Get your ass upstairs or I will drag you.”

So David went. Begrudgingly.

The kitchen seemed ungodly bright. The microwave clock stated it was just after noon, but that seemed unreal. He’d just woken up.

Frank joins him, looking around with a frown. The dirty dishes stacked in the sink. David’s exhaustion, clear in every line of his aching body. His tired eyes. His unwashed hair. David feels himself being… _processed_ is the only word that comes to him for the way Frank stares, like he’s deciding how to tackle some big project.

“Show me your hand,” Frank ordered finally, and thank god he was at least keeping his voice low. With the sun shining full through the kitchen windows, David’s head was beginning to ache. He offered Frank his good left hand, tentative, nervous like Frank might reach out and casually snap one of his fingers. Frank rolled his eyes and huffed, reaching out to grab the wounded right hand, unwrapping the bandages from it and dropping the cloth on the counter.

He appraised the scabbed-over knuckles and the red lines that radiated from the deepest of the gouges, gently pressing until David winced. Their eyes locked, Frank’s hard with something like anger -- he looked at David the way he looked at someone who hurt people he cared about, and David felt his skin crawl, the desire to sink into the floor and disappear almost overwhelming. Of course Frank would be pissed that David had blown it with Sarah.

Getting him back to his family had been the whole point of helping him.

“If you treated anyone else the way you’ve treated yourself for the last few weeks, you’d be guilty of fucking battery. Maybe negligence on top of it, what the _fuck_ , David?” Frank finally said, that old growl back in his voice. “There’s broken glass in the living room, _blood_ on the floor -- do you have any _clue_ the shit that went through my head when I saw that? And then you’re just hiding out in the basement getting shitfaced and letting yourself rot.”

Frank goes on like that for a minute, but David’s ears are ringing. He can feel his face heating, white noise beating the inside of his head, something heavy and huge building in his chest, clenching at his throat. When the first sob bursts out of him, Frank stops sharply and David doesn’t get to watch his face soften because he has to close his eyes, crying in earnest now. He hears Frank click his tongue and then thick, steady arms are around him, dragging him tight to Frank’s frame, holding him exactly how he needs, how he doesn’t deserve.

Broad hands skate soothingly up and down his back and David cries ugly for a long time. Frank doesn’t try to talk him down from it, doesn’t shush him, doesn’t ply him with platitudes. He just holds him, lets him weep, until it tapers into an harsh sort of choking. After a few of those weak choking sounds, Frank sighs and lets him go, and he wipes at his face and stares at the floor.

“C’mon. Bedroom,” Frank orders, but his tone is different now. Gentler, more decisive. When David just stares at him, bleary eyes wide and almost frightened, he huffs a low curse and grabs David’s elbow, steering him toward the stairs. “I want you to pack a bag, Lieberman. Couple changes of clothes, anything else you can’t live without for a few days.”

“Why?” David asks, and he hates how hollow he sounds, how gutted. He feels so tired, especially after crying like that. He wants to lay down. He wants to stay away from the bedroom he no longer shared with anyone. He wants a drink.

“I’m taking you home,” Frank says flatly, as if it’s no big deal. “You can stay with me for a while.”

And David gets it, kind of. Frank understands losing. Frank understands suddenly having no one. Frank understands _David_ in a way that’s honestly kind of scary sometimes. Frank wants to keep David safe and leaving him alone isn’t safe. So Frank will take him home.

It’s pity, that’s all.

David has never been so grateful.


	2. A Held Breath

The hangover is worse for his refusal to drink the water Frank brings him while he packs up his clothes, his laptop, his shaving kit. Frank watches him listlessly fumbling through his drawers and seems to decide he’s capable of taking care of himself, because he disappears from the room and, after a moment, David hears his boots on the stairs. 

He’s fumbling with his phone, two weeks abandoned on the nightstand, when the tears come back. Nineteen missed calls; seventeen from Sarah, two from Leo. Thirty-six unread texts, the most recent one from Zach -- “moms trying 2 call you. pick up.”, it said. Eighteen hours ago, that text. 

Sitting on the edge of his bed, he has an ugly image of Sarah, frantic after so many unanswered calls, calling Frank. Was that what brought him here? Sarah had the number for the phone David had given Frank, but did Frank even still carry that one?

Sniffling, phone tethered by its charging cord, he scrolled through his contacts and impulsively hit ‘call’ on Frank’s number.

Faintly, in reply, he heard the chime of the burner’s ringer, and thumbed ‘end’ before Frank could pick up, dropping his phone back on the nightstand and curling in on himself, his gut hollow and aching in grief as he started to weep again. God, but he was a fuck up.

He wants to compose himself when he hears Frank’s boots on the stairs, but he can’t. Pain sinks its teeth in and holds, and he just hides his face as Frank marches down the hall, stands in the doorway and watches.

The bed dips when Frank sits beside him, and Frank’s hand on his back is warm and firm. No touch from Frank Castle should be so wholly comforting, but it is. It soothes him.

When the crying jag tapers off, Frank squeezes his shoulder and grabs the packed bag off the floor. He doesn’t ask about the call, he doesn’t tell David to grab the rest of his shit, he just picks up the bag of clothes and stands there, waiting. 

Heading out, David notices a few things. The floor in the living room is clear of glass. The dishes from the sink are clean, drying on the rack. The basement door, portal to a comforting, close kind of cool darkness and the oblivion of a drunken stupor, is shut tight. 

“When did you eat last?” Frank asks, steering them toward the city. David keeps his gaze out the window and shrugs a shoulder. If he eats, he thinks he’ll puke. Maybe he’s sick. Maybe he’ll curl up and die.

Maybe he’s just hungover. 

A warm hand on his shoulder again. Hard eyes aimed straight ahead, watching the road, but otherwise all that attention is on him. He wishes suddenly that he were in the back with his bags, with the gun hidden under the spare tire Frank doesn’t think he knows about. 

“Are you angry?” he asks, sounding like a child who broke something precious purely by accident. Worried more about whether this man was prepared to hate him than about the shattered family he’d broken. 

Frank looks at him, long enough for it to feel significant before he has to return to watching traffic. “People grow apart. Things can’t always work forever. There’s nothing for me to be angry about here, except for you treating yourself like shit because you’d rather hurt alone than reach out again.” Frank sounds like he’s winding up to lecture and David settles his forehead against the cool glass of his window. Silence stretches for a moment while Frank reels himself in. And then, quietly, shockingly: “Are  _ you _ angry?”

David blinks, assessing. “At myself,” he finally states. “Only at myself.”

Frank’s apartment is surprisingly comfortable. David never associates Frank with comforts outside those most required to survive. The comfort of having another human being near you when you feel most alone, yes, Frank could be that. The comfort of knowing someone cared enough to put themselves in danger rather than allow you to be hurt, oh, most certainly -- that was Frank all over.

But the comfort of a second hand couch? An incongruously high-end french press sitting on the kitchen counter? No, these were not things David would have expected. These were not things that screamed ‘Frank Castle’ to him.

There are books everywhere. One sits dogeared on the arm of the couch, but there are several stacked on the floor nearby. David sees classic fiction, and a few contemporary; he sees Melville and Faulkner mingled with Straub and Clancy. There is a surprising number, when he stands before the mounted shelf and looks, laptop bag held in hand, of collections of poetry.

He had known Frank liked to read. He never would have expected to see him with  _ The Man With Night Sweats _ perched on the arm of his couch, dog eared and well-loved. 

David stands in the middle of Frank’s living area and wonders at all the ways you can know a man and still not know him. 

“I’m going to heat up some soup,” Frank says, dropping the bag of David’s clothes on the couch. “You’re going to sit there and eat it.” His tone is brisk and demanding; there is no arguing with him. This is Frank Castle taking care of him. He snorts lightly to himself, at the idea of Frank, the man who was eternally wounded, eternally bloody under David’s hands, now being the one intent on mending something in David. 

Frank gives David the bed and says nothing when David turns in early. David wonders, curled up under the thin fleece top sheet-- Frank’s apartment is comfortable, but David can’t sleep if he’s not covered up -- if Frank only took the couch because David couldn’t sneak out if he had to go past him. Frank works early in the morning -- how he manages to hold a job and do the vigilante shit he does some nights, David doesn’t want to think about -- so the apartment is dark and silent by midnight.

They fall into a sort of rhythm. Frank has to be to the work site by 6:30 AM, so he’s up by 5:00; David pretends to still be asleep while Frank silently grabs clothes and dresses himself. He usually actually falls asleep by the time Frank mutters a ‘goodnight’ on his way out the door; Frank is never fooled by David’s slow breathing and closed eyes. Frank sees through him.

Frank calls him when he takes his lunch break, same time every day. He tries to ignore this call the first day he’s there, rolling away from his phone, but Frank simply keeps calling until David picks up. “Get your ass out of bed and eat something,” Frank says, leaving it unsaid that he’ll know if David doesn’t. Frank keeps his cupboards stocked with long-lasting non-perishables, placed on the shelf in rigid order. There is a box of chamomile tea, which David thought Frank hated, prominently placed beside containers of different coffees. Some mornings David gets by with a cup of tea, and deals with Frank’s scowling disapproval later. Other days he sighs and shuffles and finally has a bowl of oatmeal or a small sandwich.

There is no drinking but water. Frank doesn’t even have beer in the fridge. 

And they both know that David could leave while Frank is at work, and neither of them acknowledge it. It doesn’t happen, even when David dresses to face the weather -- because he’d have to leave Frank’s door unlocked behind him, and he can’t do that. Because Frank would worry, and he can’t take that. 

Because there were nineteen missed calls on his phone and he still hasn’t returned a single one, but Frank came for him and refuses to leave him to rot.

At some point, maybe five days into this arrangement, David wakes up at the unholy hour of 3:24AM and in the dark he sees the shape of Frank sitting on the couch. Usually by this hour Frank is settled in to sleep, but now he sits and he rocks, just enough that David can clock it in the low light, the way Frank rocks when he’s in pain and thinks no one is watching him.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to lay back down and pretend he didn’t see. It’s what he’d always done in the power station, pretend he didn’t notice the nightmares, pretend he didn’t see the pain carved on Frank’s face, flaying him alive. 

David climbs out of bed and pads across the studio space, resisting the urge to wrap his arms around his chest because even in the sweltering heat of the apartment, he feels cold. He can’t justify this, because approaching Frank in the dark, when he’s obviously hurting, is as dangerous as sneaking up on a wounded predator -- whether your intent is to help or not, you’re likely to end up hurt. Placing his hand on Frank’s bare shoulder, feeling him tense up, David braces himself. Maybe he wants a violent response, the justification to walk away from this. But Frank just exhales, sitting very still as David eases onto the couch beside him.

There is a moment, when David thinks Frank might say something to him. Dig in, tell him off finally. David’s been waiting, despite what Frank said -- and didn’t say -- during the ride over here. He’s waiting for Frank to show his disappointment, his bitter anger, over David managing to lose his family after everything they went through, all the pain Frank endured, to get them back. 

When Frank just sighs quietly, as if coming through the other side of some personal revelation, and shifts his weight to lean carefully against David, David feels his heart clench. 

He makes himself get up early that morning, 5:00 sharp, and he makes Frank breakfast while Frank brews coffee in his weird french press. They eat on the couch and Frank says, on his way out, “Go ahead and take a nap. I’ll call at lunch.”

Like this is just normal. Like he understands how tired David still is despite all the laying around he does.

Three days later, Frank has a day off. He sleeps late (all the way until 7AM) and he and David sit around the apartment. David has been putting his laptop where Frank can see it too and binging different shows. Frank almost always has a book in hand -- he’s thumbing his way through the Thom Gunn collection still, taking his time -- but sometimes he’ll chuckle at the goings on of whatever David’s watching. He seems to like  _ Parks and Rec _ , even though he calls it “ridiculous”.  David says Ron and Frank would get along and Frank actually laughs.

And then, when it gets dark, Frank starts gearing up. Tactical vest, dark, close fit jeans, well-worn shit-stomping boots. Even in this heat, he puts on that stupid leather coat. David says nothing, just watches Frank slip out his own window and listens to the rattle of the fire escape. He falls asleep hours later, too worried to focus on Netflix and too dog-tired to pretend he can stay awake until Frank comes back.

He wakes up in the early morning to the feeling of the mattress dipping, Frank falling into bed fully dressed. His boots are still on and he has a great big bruise spread over the half of his face not pressed against the bedding. David sighs and gets up, shaking his head when Frank starts to snore softly. He’s asking for a kick to the head, reaching to pull Frank’s stupid heavy boots off, but Frank just lets him. 

And maybe, David starts to realize as he gets the blanket off the couch and uses it to cover Frank up, they’re taking care of each other. 

Maybe that never stopped.

He calls Sarah the next day. 

She exudes a careful sort of excitement. “I’m fine,” he tells her. “I’m sorry I didn’t call back for so long,” he says. And when she starts to apologize, he cuts her off, because he needs to take responsibility and because the idea of her blaming herself for any of this is absolutely abhorrent to him. He keeps his own apology quick and simple because he doesn’t need to have a breakdown while Frank is still sleeping off whatever he’d gotten into last night, and they turn their conversation to lighter things.

“How’s Frank?” She asks, after they’ve run out of things for her to tell him about Leo’s new friends and Zach’s newfound love of hiking. 

He pauses. He doesn’t know how to answer that.

“He was worried, when I called him. I thought you should know -- we were all. Well, ignoring calls isn’t usually your thing.”

“Yeah,” David says faintly. Nineteen missed calls, he thinks. Thirty-six unread texts. They’re all still on his phone, still unopened. He doesn’t know how to address them. “I just. Uh. He’s good, you know? He’s helping me get my shit together. I’m… figuring stuff out.”

She laughs, then, and it’s gentle. “Figuring stuff out,” she repeats, musing, and he feels the ridiculous urge to try hiding the blush that blooms on his face, like she can see him. Like she would judge him for staying here, for letting himself fall asleep last night in the same bed as Frank. 

There’s not much to talk about after that. He wants to ask her when they’re coming back, but he doesn’t. He wants to ask if she still thinks he shouldn’t consider this a break, but he doesn’t do that either. When she finally says she has to go, he tries not to feel relieved. He sits on the couch and listens to the even sound of Frank sleeping despite the late hour of the morning, and tries to figure out if his conversation with his not-quite-ex-wife made him feel better or worse.

Mostly, he just kind of wants a drink.

The fridge, of course, holds no beer, but it  _ does _ hold eggs, and spinach, and some cheese. David hasn’t made a proper omelette in a while, but he remembers the steps. Spinach and cheese is not the fanciest filling, not exactly like Vietnamese hangover curing soup, but good enough, evidently, that Frank actually smiles when David brings him a plate. They sit on the bed, like that’s normal, and eat together. 

When David gets out of the shower, grumbling curses at the thinness of Frank’s towels as he tries to rub some of the wetness out of his hair, Frank is sitting on the couch, fully dressed and waiting. 

Looking back later, David will never find the exact words to describe the outing they go on. It’s not a date, but it kind of is. They go to the little grocery store a few blocks away and they bicker about what kind of lunch meat to get (they end up with turkey; Frank is pleased) and whether there’s a point to getting cold cereal when neither of them like milk (they decide to stick with oatmeal). They get lunch on the way back, some hole-in-the-wall sandwich place Frank justifies frequenting by saying ‘they have good coffee’.

Frank buys their lunch and they talk about little things, easy things. Frank gets halfways through a story about some idiot at the site he was currently working for who refused to wear construction goggles and ended up with a chip of cement in his eye (this was the sort of story Frank found amusing to tell during meal times) and David asks, abruptly, “Should I be thinking about when to leave?”

He doesn’t know how to read the way Frank looks at him. He’s very still, holding the last few bites of his sandwich between the table and his mouth, like he’s waiting for clarification. David gives none -- it was hard enough to put the idea out there. Finally, Frank sighs and sets the sandwich down.

“Do you want to leave?”

David thinks about his phone ringing at a quarter to noon, making sure he’s awake, making sure he eats. He thinks about Frank leaning against him on the couch, too tired to deny the offer of comfort. Pulling heavy boots off Frank’s feet and covering him up before crawling back into what had somehow become his side of the bed.

“No. I just, like --”

“So don’t.”

They finish their sandwiches and Frank never finishes telling his story. They’re quiet, in fact, until they finish putting away groceries. Then Frank asks if David’s going to watch more Netflix, and David welcomes the feeling of relief that comes with the return of simplicity between them.

When David gets up to go to bed that evening, knowing Frank had work in the morning and there could be no more sleeping in for him, he watches Frank start to stretch out across the couch and finds himself saying, “I thought we were sharing the bed now.”

He can feel his face heat when he’s treated to another of Frank’s inscrutable looks, but he maintains eye contact. And when Frank finally utters that little half laugh of his and shrugs, he smiles too. 

“If you wanna wake up to this ugly mug, that’s on you, Lieberman,” Frank says as he passes David and goes to brush his teeth. 

There’s something soothing about falling asleep with someone against his back. The warm solidity of Frank’s arm against his back. It’s not cuddling and neither of them make any move to steer it in that direction; they barely even touch, but for David, at least, he’s deeply aware of Frank’s presence, and takes a great comfort in it. 

In the morning, Frank makes coffee and David scrambles eggs, making a point to loudly comment on how good  _ ham _ would be with the cheesy egg mess he plates them up, until Frank exhales a soft curse and says next week they’d get some “ _ fucking _ ham, okay, Lieberman?”

Frank leans in and kisses David’s cheek before he walks out the door, like that’s normal, like it’s no big deal, and David gets it, kind of. 

He gets that Frank understands being lonely. Frank understands the comfort of just sharing a space, of cohabiting. Frank maybe understands David being stuck between remaining faithful to someone who he can’t have back and wanting to let go and move on. 

It’s comfort, something Frank keeps proving again and again these days he’s better at reacquainting himself with than David has been. 

It’s comfort, traded between two friends.

David will take what he can get.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see y'all in chapter three, which i swear will actually be the end.


	3. Begin Again

A fifty-fifty split, is what David calls it. Really, he thinks he manages to keep the bitterness out of his voice pretty well, when he, grinning, suggests this to Sarah.

The cafe, busy and sunny and utterly unconducive to falling back into his depression, serves coffee in thick mugs, if one plans to stay and enjoy the drink there, with one dollar refills. Frank had rolled his eyes at the cost when David had brought him here a week ago, but conceded that the coffee itself was good.

Sarah has her hair pinned back to keep it from clinging to her neck, and she orders her coffee with ice. David wears a beanie in spite of the August heat, and finds it hard to meet her eyes when she laughs. They sit with their coffees and Sarah seems pleased that he’s willing (or perhaps that he’s able) to get straight to the quick of things.

What David doesn’t want is for this to become any more bitter than it already is. He understands Sarah’s position -- the position he’s put her in -- and she understands him, too. Better than he does sometimes. It seems to be a running theme with the people he chooses to share space with, this ability to understand him on a level even he can’t quite manage. He’s missed talking to her, and thinks maybe that, in the way she watches him, careful and quiet despite her laughter, she’s missed him too. 

They’re adults, and even if the love has somehow shifted into a different caliber of emotion between them, they still care about one another. They are not unkind. They do not discuss lawyers, though they both must know they’ll end up dealing with them. The mention of custody is met with a brief silence and then David shrugging. It only makes sense that the kids stay with Sarah, he says, and leaves the table to pay a dollar for new coffee he doesn’t really want. By the time he returns to the table, the urge to cry is gone.

It’s not forever. This is not a loss. 

He tells her he wants her to keep the house and she pauses. He says, “If we sell it, then you get the money from it. It’s more yours than it ever was mine.”

She seems to understand.

There’s a lot of understanding, really. 

“When will you visit?” She asks when he looks at his watch and says he has to go. She doesn’t ask where to or why; he’s not sure how that indifference makes him feel. “The kids want to see you. Leo says you’re catching up on her reading list?”

The smile he gives her is not forced, but he knows, by the way she pauses, by the way her own smile hesitates to appear, that it’s brittle. “Whenever you’ll have me. Kids go back to school next month on the… fifth, right? Call me. We’ll do something before then.”

He hurries out of the cafe with as much speed as he can make socially acceptable, and he doesn’t let himself make a sound until he’s safely back in Frank’s apartment. If the lock blurs when he goes to slide his key home, what of it? He still gets through the door without a sob, and that’s victory enough. 

Chicken soup is easy enough to make that he can do so with his eyes closed, practically, which works well when he keeps breaking into sobs. His hands move automatically; he’s done this so many times, it’s just a natural response at this point. Your heart breaks, you make chicken soup; it’s axiomatic. 

The apartment is fragrant with chopped garlic and onion, with dill and the cozy aroma of cooking chicken, the soup well on its way to completion while David stands with his arms braced on the counter and tries to regain some sense of composure. He hears the door unlock, hears it swing open and then shut, the click-thunk of the deadbolt sliding home.

There are a million platitudes Frank could offer. David knows them all, knows them by heart; he’s said them enough times, he’s heard them and read them, had them etched upon his ribs. No one can make anyone love them. All good things must come to an end. Time heals all wounds.

Everything happens for a reason.

Frank offers none of these. He comes to stand behind David and he slides his arms around his middle, under the arms still stiffly fixed against the counter. This version of a hug requires nothing from David, and he sighs, the sound hideously teary, letting Frank support him for a moment. He smells like sweat and concrete dust, which really shouldn’t be comforting, but David is getting used to things that shouldn’t be being exactly what they are. 

“Gonna take a shower. We could watch that… Happy Place?... while we eat, yeah?”

“Good Place,” David corrects quietly, hating the sound of his own voice, so small and so tight. He clears his throat and makes himself stand up straight. “Yeah, go on. You smell, man, get off me.”

He doesn’t think the chuckle Frank gives in response to that is forced, and he smiles himself when Frank pulls him closer for a second, leaning in to press a kiss to his cheek. It’s gentle and soft and he doesn’t understand how Frank so neatly intuits his needs, his desperate desire for contact, but he does and that’s enough. 

Maybe that’s the platitude Frank is offering, never uttering a word;  _ you are not alone _ . 

Maybe that’s enough, too.

Bowls of soup balanced in their laps, Frank sits close enough to David while they watch the show that David can slowly sink into him. When the soup is gone and the bowls are set on the low coffee table beside David’s laptop, Frank starts absently carding his fingers through David’s hair, gently detangling it, and David closes his eyes. 

He’s tired.

He thinks this is about the point where he should want a drink, but the idea doesn’t appeal to him. At least, not well enough to compare to the feeling of Frank dragging his nails lightly against his scalp. 

“I think she’s going to move away from the city,” David says finally, and Frank’s hand only slows for a moment. David doesn’t open his eyes. He makes a point not to imagine what expression may have crossed Frank’s face.

“Are you going to go back to --”

“I told her to take the house.” He sighs and sits up, feeling Frank’s hand slide away, coming to rest flat over his shoulder blade. Frank allows this now, more and more; these idle touches that are everything and nothing between them. “I think she wants to go somewhere where the kids can find new friends. Leo had a bunch of kids following her around Saco. Parents around here might have heard that I’m a good guy again, but the kids didn’t get the message. I think Zach got into a fist fight the last week of school. No one knows them out there.”

Frank mulls this over, and David fights the urge to get up and start tidying up after dinner. The need to discuss this is as strong as the need to pretend it isn’t happening, and he’s not quite dumb enough not to be able to tell which option will hurt him more in the long run. 

“She tell you this, or did you  _ infer _ ?”

David lifts a shoulder. He feels hollow now that the tears are played out, tired in a way he hasn’t felt in weeks. It feels too dramatic to say that he’s back to square one after a few hours with Sarah, but it’s at least halfway to being that bad. 

He thinks about tail lights disappearing around the corner. He thinks about a summer without his kids. He thinks about thirty-six unread text messages, deleted unopened on his phone because after so long, what in god’s name was he supposed to say to anyone. 

He thinks about the dishes set up into the dish rack, the living room floor cleared of glass. The basement door so firmly, soundly shut. Of arms wrapping around him and promising a sort of security (but never safety, no; safety was not the purview of this man) that David was so bereft of.

These things do not answer the question Frank asked, but in their own way, they help David get to a place where he can manage to find that answer. 

“I guess I inferred.”

Frank squeezes David’s shoulder and he sighs again. It’s only a little after six, but Frank says nothing when David shuts his laptop in the middle of the episode neither of them had been paying attention to and goes to lay down.

He wants to sleep. He’s tired enough that he  _ should _ sleep. He lays there with his eyes open and listens to the sound of Frank cleaning up the kitchen and tidying up the living room a bit, and then he follows Frank’s footsteps around the apartment as he tries not to make it obvious that he’s pacing, before, at last, he climbs into bed behind David, curling up close behind him. 

In the weeks since that first kiss on the cheek, David has almost had the impulsive courage required to grab Frank and kiss him proper. He’s kept himself from it every time, despite temptation. Tonight, in the dull light that comes through the window because it’s still far too early for sunset on an August evening, part of David wants to turn around and face Frank, wants to kiss him, pull him into an exchange that was more about intimate reassurances than anything. He thinks, laying there, that if he were to do that, to turn and press his lips to Frank’s, Frank would go with it. 

Maybe, Frank would even like it.

He falls asleep in the too-warm embrace, his back against Frank’s chest, cuddling instead. For the most part, the idea of anything more than the feeling of a strong arm slung around his middle, breath soft against his neck, is sickening. He wants to call that ‘fear’, and makes a concerted effort to note that the apartment is much too warm instead.

A few days later, he feels better equipped to handle it when Sarah calls and asks if he wants to do dinner. It helps that she sounds as awkward about extending the invitation as he feels receiving it. 

It’s nice, honestly. Leo asks him if he’s started reading  _ Anansi Boys _ yet, groans when he says he thought they were doing  _ The Martian  _ next. Zach is quiet, but his interest in listening to David talk about work is actually noticeably acute. Leo is tanned and Zach has sunburn still peeling across his nose, his shoulders, speaking silently of hours spent outdoors. Neither of them are excited to start school again in less than two weeks, and David commiserates with them. 

With Sarah, he finds the conversation flows surprisingly well. But it still doesn’t feel like he’s home, for all that he’s back in the house they’d always shared. They move around each other and she doesn’t touch him once, not even in passing, and he notes every missed brush of fingers, every carefully paced step around him. It is as if they have each entered these personal bubbles, through which neither can touch the other. He peels and cubes sweet potatoes and she sweeps the pieces into a pan; he marinates the chicken and she transfers it to the baking dish and slides it into the oven. They move together and around each other; they neatly, perfectly do not touch.

He brings leftovers back with him, trying not to read too much into the pictures no longer propped on the mantle, on the surface of side tables and shelves, the boxes still flat and stacked in the corner of the living room. He leans against Frank and listens to him complain about some coworker slacking that had almost let someone else get hurt, notes the fact that it’s the safety aspect that really bothers him and not the laziness of one guy. Frank eats the chunks of sweet potato with his fingers, cold and straight out of the container David had brought back, and David feels more relaxed than he has since Sarah called.

Frank doesn’t ask about the dinner and David doesn’t mention it. Sometimes that’s part of it, part of understanding -- knowing when to just let something lie. 

David can take no more sick days. Technically, he should have been fired for the two weeks (and change) he’d gone AWOL, but the software development company was small and his supervisor liked him. When he mentioned he was facing a divorce, he’d been forgiven. 

Picking up the work he’d stepped away from helps fill his days. He’s good at what he does and he doesn’t have to leave the apartment to do it; he doesn’t have to leave the  _ bed _ if he doesn’t want. All he needs is his laptop and cellphone. 

Frank still calls him every day when he takes his break, never later than ten minutes to noon. He says it’s just a good cover to excuse never talking to his coworkers, but still he reminds David to eat, to take a break. That Frank Castle should be better at keeping up with self care than he is should be laughable, but again -- it is what it is. 

Every week, he meets with Sarah at that same sunny cafe, and they begin the process of figuring out paperwork. He keeps waiting, hating himself for it, for her to tell him she’s changed her mind.

There are more tears, but she does not see them. There are bad nights, while Frank is out hunting evil people and collecting bruises, where he sits up and thinks about leaving. Little things keep him there. Who would take Frank’s boots off when he collapsed, insensate, on the bed after these nights out? Who would use the eggs he’d just bought? Who would finish cleaning up the code for the build he’d been assigned?

One evening is so bad, after getting home from meeting with Sarah where they’d decided to file for ‘irreconcilable differences’, a term he absolutely loathed applying to them despite being apt, and then managing to burn himself while boiling noodles, that Frank just bundles him on the couch, curling around him like he can block out the rest of the world with his bulk; he holds him like that until David falls asleep and then carries him to bed. He must have, because that’s where David wakes up. 

The leaves are mostly fallen when he and Sarah finally file the paperwork with the court. He thinks he should have that moment committed to memory, the moment when his marriage is, at least as far as either of them is concerned, fully over. His breath ghosts in air when he stands outside the courthouse, and he remembers that, remembers the weight of the door and holding it open for Sarah. 

Sarah is gentle with him. She is polite and understanding and doesn’t get frustrated when he needs time to compose himself. She tells him, quietly, privately, as they stand alone together at the foot of the courthouse steps, that she wants him to take care of himself -- not for anyone’s sake but his. That she loves him, and always will, but it’s different now.

He knows. He knows, he knows, he knows. 

For the first time in almost five months, she wraps her arms around him, pulling him down into a hug that is tight and sweet and he understands with sudden, terrible clarity that it doesn’t  _ matter _ if he lets himself move on or fall in love with someone new, he will  _ never _ love anyone the same way as he loves her. Love is as unique and as damning as fingerprints. 

Somehow, that makes it easier to let her go. 

It’s Frank’s idea to go out that night. They go to this Italian place where Frank orders them wine and they drink the whole bottle, glass after glass over hearty pasta and fresh, warm bread. David thinks, several times that evening, that he should be sadder, he should be inconsolable. It’s hard, with Frank sitting there across from him, loose-lipped and warm from the wine, telling him stories about his days in basic training.

They both sleep in the next day, and when David tries to get out of bed before Frank is ready, Frank drags him back down and holds him close. 

Two nights later, after one of his armored nights out, Frank stumbles in through the window, shedding freezing air off him as he approaches the bed, dripping blood from a vicious looking wound just under his right eye. David helps ease him onto the bed and then retrieves the first aid kit. He cleans Frank up as quickly and as efficiently as he can manage, stitching the wound into a neat, dark crescent below his eye. 

It feels perfectly natural, when Frank is all sewn up and half swaying with exhaustion, for David to lean down and kiss him. 

Lips meet and David still, even now, half-expects Frank to hit him. He gets hands, stiff and cold, aching from bruised knuckles, raising to frame his face instead. Frank is shaking, cold and tired and probably in pain, and David is more concerned with getting him warmed up and comfortable again. The kiss is sweet, but it’s sweeter to see Frank let himself fall back into the bed and have him let David take off his boots (still stupid, still too heavy) and get him covered up. Sweeter to have him, even as he’s falling asleep, curl himself around David, stealing warmth and sighing in something like contentment.

There’s snow on the ground when Frank drives him out to the house to pack up the rest of his belongings. He wonders, watching the telephone poles whip past, how this temporary thing with Frank became so permanent. It all feels so oddly inevitable, like this has been building since the first moment he and Frank looked at each other, since he raised his hand in greeting from where he’d been watching him on the roof of that diner. 

What had he said, when Frank first started coming around? They were just working together, right? Not looking to be friends. He startles himself when he laughs at the memory, and feels it when Frank gives him that little side eye. 

Frank comes in with him without David needing to ask. The house, even with so much packed and stacked up in boxes, still feels recognizable as a place he  _ should _ call home. His kids are here. Sarah. He thinks about books stacked on the floor by a second-hand couch, thinks about the rattle of the fire escape in the dark of the night; he thinks about Frank softly laughing at whatever stupid joke was made on whatever David was binge-watching at the time, about strong arms that hold him without his ever having to say that’s what he needs, and he understands that ‘home’ isn’t here anymore. It was, and then it wasn’t. 

Home is ephemeral, the requirements to create it changing as quick as a gunshot. 

He packs the rest of his clothes and Leo and Zach talk about the apartment in Chelsea. Sarah provides lunch and they sit around the table and eat while she complains about it starting to snow again. It should be more awkward, he thinks; it should hurt to be here, to see his family happy to move along, separate from him, eager to begin the next phase of their life.

It is instead almost a relief. It’s so easy, so natural, to move around this house and grab the few things that are really his, to offer to stay and help with the rest. Because he loves everyone in this house, yes, and he wants what’s best for all of them, oh certainly, and maybe that’s really what this is. Sarah gives him a little card with the address for the building they’ll be in and laughs when Frank holds his hand out for it after David finishes mentally trying to figure out how far it is from where he and Frank are. 

They drive home in the snow, Frank scowling through the windshield and cursing at the oncoming traffic for using their high beams. David finds himself smiling as they walk, rushing because it’s too damn cold to linger, from the shitty alley parking space Frank finds three blocks away from the apartment; he laughs when Frank slips and has to catch himself against the brick of a building and when he gets shoved for it he only laughs more.

It feels good. He feels good.

The apartment is warm, too warm after the freeze of the outdoors. David peels his layers off one by one and watches as Frank does the same, and there’s a moment where he realizes Frank is watching him and he feels this weird sense of  _ slippage _ , of everything sliding towards a certain inevitable result. He laughs again and Frank smiles, hooking a hand a hand around David’s neck and pulling him into a kiss.

David thinks, as they help each other with the rest of their clothes in the inelegant rush of the needy and the cold, that sex with Frank is liable to be intense; fast and hard, demanding, something that pushes the both of them to the edges of pain and leaves them exhausted. He expects Frank, while not inconsiderate, to be more concerned with getting what he wants than making it really feel good.

What he finds instead is that Frank is, in this at least, very careful. He is economical in that every move he makes means something, is designed to get a reaction. What David finds is that Frank is generous, more concerned with how David is feeling than anything. He takes his time, he kisses David like it’s the only thing on his mind, touches him like it’s the only way to ground himself. 

What he finds if that Frank, with his rough hands and his crooked smile, is sweet. 

When he gasps and buries one side of his face against the pillows, Frank stops, looking for all the world like he’s just as overwhelmed as David. It’s a cousin to the look David has seen on Frank’s so many times, when he comes awake from some terror or another; it’s a distant relation to the look he’d worn when he came back from the brink of death.

David likes this look better. 

Frank fucks him with perfect intention, on that David’s expectations are perfectly met. He tries to pull away when David comes, and David wraps his legs around him, holding him; he won’t let him go until Frank finishes too. 

Laying together in the aftermath, sheets tangled up and pulled out at the ends, they remain side by side, breathing, just breathing. 

“I don’t want to leave,” David says quietly, almost musing. Frank sits up slowly, rolling on his side so he can better look at him. His dark eyes are hard to read, but he seems to be close to smiling, satisfied in a way that has nothing to do with the post-coital haze. 

“So don’t,” he finally says, and when David says nothing, he settles into the bed, resting his head on David’s shoulder. “If you want to stay, stay.”

“What do you want?”

They lay there in silence long enough that David almost regrets asking, and then Frank shifts, kissing David with gentle intensity. “I got what I want,” he says finally. “I’m good.”

And David gets it. He really does. 

Frank understands change. Frank understands needing something to hold on to, and he understands how holding on to something can change you, can change what you want in the long run. He understands being alone, yeah, and he understands connecting with someone so suddenly and so strongly that it rocks through your life, shaking your foundations, changing your future.

It’s love, wrapping tight between them and drawing them together in ways neither of them anticipated, neither of them planned.

It’s love, and it’s that simple.

David has never been so humbled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THAT'S IT. WE'RE DONE.


End file.
